Archive for 'foreclosure process'

When Michael Gazzarato took a job that required him to sign hundreds of affidavits in a single day, he had one demand for his employer: a much better pen.

Lisa Krantz for The New York Times

Linda Almonte of San Antonio has filed a wrongful termination suit against JPMorgan Chase, where she flagged defects in a portfolio of debt Chase was trying to sell.

Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

In July, the Federal Trade Commission, led by Jon Leibowitz, issued a report critical of the debt-collection system, saying banks were selling account information that can be riddled with errors.

“They tried to get me to do it with a Bic, and I wasn’t going — I wasn’t having it,” he said. “It was bad when I had to use the plastic Papermate-type pen. It was a nightmare.”

The complaint could have come from any of the autograph marathoners in the recent mortgage foreclosure mess. But Mr. Gazzarato was speaking at a deposition in a 2007 lawsuit against Asset Acceptance, a company that buys consumer debts and then tries to collect.

His job was to sign affidavits, swearing that he had personally reviewed and verified the records of debtors — a time-consuming task when done correctly.

Sound familiar?

Banks have been under siege in recent weeks for widespread corner-cutting in the rush to process delinquent mortgages. The accusations have stirred outrage and set off investigations by attorneys general across the country, prompting several leading banks to temporarily cease foreclosures.

But lawyers who defend consumers in debt-collection cases say the banks did not invent the headless, assembly-line approach to financial paperwork. Debt buyers, they say, have been doing it for years.

“The difference is that in the case of debt buyers, the abuses are much worse,” says Richard Rubin, a consumer lawyer in Santa Fe, N.M.

“At least when it comes to mortgages, the banks have the right address, everyone agrees about the interest rate. But with debt buyers, the debt has been passed through so many hands, often over so many years, that a lot of time, these companies are pursuing the wrong person, or the charges have no lawful basis.”

The debt in these cases — typically from credit cards, auto loans, utility bills and so on — is sold by finance companies and banks in a vast secondary market, bundled in huge portfolios, for pennies on the dollar. Debt buyers often hire collectors to commence a campaign of insistent letters and regular phone calls. Or, in a tactic that is becoming increasingly popular, they sue.

Nobody knows how many debt-collection affidavits are filed each year, but a report by the nonprofit Legal Aid Society found that in New York City alone more than 450,000 were filed by debt buyers, from January 2006 to July 2008, yielding more than $1.1 billion in judgments and settlements.

Problems with this torrent of litigation are legion, according to the Federal Trade Commission, led by Jon Leibowitz. The agency issued a report on the subject, “Repairing a Broken System,” in July. In some instances, banks are selling account information that is riddled with errors.

More often, essential background information simply is not acquired by debt buyers, in large part because that data adds to the price of each account. But court rules state that anyone submitting an affidavit to a court against a debtor must have proof of that claim — proper documentation of a debt’s origins, history and amount.

Without that information it is hard to imagine how any company could meet the legal standard of due diligence, particularly while churning out thousands and thousands of affidavits a week.

Analysts say that affidavit-signers at debt-buying companies appear to have little choice but to take at face value the few facts typically provided to them — often little more than basic account information on a computer screen.

That was made vividly clear during the deposition last year of Jay Mills, an employee of a subsidiary of SquareTwo Financial (then known as Collect America), a debt-buying company in Denver.

“So,” asked Dale Irwin, the plaintiff’s lawyer, using shorthand for Collect America, “if you see on the screen that the moon is made of green cheese, you trust that CACH has investigated that and has determined that in fact, the moon is made of green cheese?”

“Yes,” Mr. Mills replied.

Given the volume of affidavits, even perfunctory research seems impossible. Cherie Thomas, who works for Asta Funding, a debt buyer in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., said in a 2007 deposition that she had signed 2,000 affidavits a day. With a half-hour for lunch and two brief breaks, that’s roughly one affidavit every 13 seconds.

Consumer advocates, the press, investors and homeowners have already compiled a compelling list of transgressions: conflicts of interest that have banks pushing foreclosures, without a good-faith effort to modify troubled loans. Dubious fees that inflate mortgage balances. The hundreds of thousands of flawed foreclosure affidavits that violated homeowners’ legal protections. The misplaced documents. And it goes on.

IN Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the economy are serious. For instance, the International Monetary Fund found that the persistently high unemployment in the United States is largely the result of foreclosures and underwater mortgages, rather than widely cited causes like mismatches between job requirements and worker skills.

This chapter of the financial crisis is a self-inflicted wound. The major banks and their agents have for years taken shortcuts with their mortgage securitization documents — and not due to a momentary lack of attention, but as part of a systematic approach to save money and increase profits. The result can be seen in the stream of reports of colossal foreclosure mistakes: multiple banks foreclosing on the same borrower; banks trying to seize the homes of people who never had a mortgage or who had already entered into a refinancing program.

Banks are claiming that these are just accidents. But suppose that while absent-mindedly paying a bill, you wrote a check from a bank account that you had already closed. No one would have much sympathy with excuses that you were in a hurry and didn’t mean to do it, and it really was just a technicality.

The most visible symptoms of cutting corners have come up in the foreclosure process, but the roots lie much deeper. As has been widely documented in recent weeks, to speed up foreclosures, some banks hired low-level workers, including hair stylists and teenagers, to sign or simply stamp documents like affidavits — a job known as being a “robo-signer.”

Such documents were improper, since the person signing an affidavit is attesting that he has personal knowledge of the matters at issue, which was clearly impossible for people simply stamping hundreds of documents a day. As a result, several major financial firms froze foreclosures in many states, and attorneys general in all 50 states started an investigation.

However, the problems in the mortgage securitization market run much wider and deeper than robo-signing, and started much earlier than the foreclosure process.

When mortgage securitization took off in the 1980s, the contracts to govern these transactions were written carefully to satisfy not just well-settled, state-based real estate law, but other state and federal considerations. These included each state’s Uniform Commercial Code, which governed “secured” transactions that involve property with loans against them, and state trust law, since the packaged loans are put into a trust to protect investors. On the federal side, these deals needed to satisfy securities agencies and the Internal Revenue Service.

This process worked well enough until roughly 2004, when the volume of transactions exploded. Fee-hungry bankers broke the origination end of the machine. One problem is well known: many lenders ceased to be concerned about the quality of the loans they were creating, since if they turned bad, someone else (the investors in the securities) would suffer.

A second, potentially more significant, failure lay in how the rush to speed up the securitization process trampled traditional property rights protections for mortgages.

The procedures stipulated for these securitizations are labor-intensive. Each loan has to be signed over several times, first by the originator, then by typically at least two other parties, before it gets to the trust, “endorsed” the same way you might endorse a check to another party. In general, this process has to be completed within 90 days after a trust is closed.

Evidence is mounting that these requirements were widely ignored. Judges are noticing: more are finding that banks cannot prove that they have the standing to foreclose on the properties that were bundled into securities. If this were a mere procedural problem, the banks could foreclose once they marshaled their evidence. But banks who are challenged in many cases do not resume these foreclosures, indicating that their lapses go well beyond minor paperwork.

Increasingly, homeowners being foreclosed on are correctly demanding that servicers prove that the trust that is trying to foreclose actually has the right to do so. Problems with the mishandling of the loans have been compounded by the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, an electronic lien-registry service that was set up by the banks. While a standardized, centralized database was a good idea in theory, MERS has been widely accused of sloppy practices and is increasingly facing legal challenges.

“Are title insurance companies still insuring foreclosure properties?”– James In Cambridge

Answer: Yes, they are.

Initially, the press reported that some major title insurers had temporarily stopped insuring foreclosure titles from JP Morgan Chase, Ally Financial, and Bank of America. However, my understanding is that all title insurers have resumed insuring all foreclosure properties in the wake of several major agreements between national title insurance companies and lenders. These warranty and indemnification agreements would essentially shift the risk of loss from irregular/defective foreclosures back onto the foreclosing lenders.

From the conveyancing side, I can definitely tell you that title insurers have advised their attorney agents to go through foreclosure titles with a fine tooth comb and to be especially diligent in examining and certifying foreclosure titles. Buyers of foreclosure properties should be prepared for delays in getting their transactions closed.

“How is robo-signing different from the Ibanez case situation”?–Scott

Answer: ”Robo-signing” and the Massachusetts Ibanez foreclosure case are two different situations, but the root of the problem — the complexity of the securitized mortgage industry and the sheer volume of foreclosure paperwork to be processed — remains a contributing cause of both problems.

“Robo-signing,” as one of the leading foreclosure defense attorneys has claimed to the Huffington Post, refers to how financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in “foreclosure expert” jobs with no formal training to sign sworn documents submitted to courts. According to depositions released in Florida and the Post, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn’t define the word “affidavit.” Others didn’t know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits, and that they agreed with the defense lawyers’ accusations about document fraud.

This is obviously a major problem in states such as Florida which require a judge’s approval of a foreclosure based on sworn documents. However, Massachusetts is not such a state. Other than verifying the borrower is not in the military, Massachusetts state law doesn’t require any sworn verification that the foreclosure is kosher (if you will). That may change after lawmakers and the Attorney General’s office react this foreclosure mess. In fact, the AG announced this week she is investigating on of the largest “foreclosure mills” in the state for alleged non-compliance with the new tenant foreclosure law.

The Ibanez problem occurs when mortgage loan documentation recorded with the Registry of Deeds lagged far behind the actual ownership of the loan, due to complex mortgage securitization agreements and sloppy follow up. Land Court Judge Keith Long’s ruling effectively invalidated thousands of foreclosures which suffered from this newly recognized “defect.” The Ibanez situation is not a product of fraud, like robo-signing, in my opinion. In fact, the practice of recording mortgage assignments “late” was long accepted by the title examination community prior to the Ibanez ruling. So it caught a lot of folks off-guard.Getting title insurance on an Ibanez-afflicted property is near impossible these days, and the robo-signing controversy certainly doesn’t help alleviate the risk tolerance of anxious title insurance underwriters.

To be sure, both Ibanez and the robo-signing controversy have reverberated through the real estate community, and have impacted foreclosure sales on a number of levels. If you are considering purchasing a foreclosed property, please contact us so we can guide you through the complicated process and protect your interests.

Wells Fargo said that current reviews found that bank employees had failed to “strictly adhere” to its required procedures during a final step in its documentation processes. It also acknowledged that “some aspects of the notarization process” had not always been properly followed, creating the potential for paperwork errors.

After several weeks of insisting its foreclosure processes were sound, Wells Fargo & Company said on Wednesday that it planned to correct and resubmit up to 55,000 improperly filed documents by mid-November.

Wells Fargo said that current reviews found that bank employees had failed to “strictly adhere” to its required procedures during a final step in its documentation processes. It also acknowledged that “some aspects of the notarization process” had not always been properly followed, creating the potential for paperwork errors.

Wells officials said that the bank started to correct the 55,000 questionable files, and “out of an abundance of caution,” planned to resubmit them in 23 states where foreclosures require court approval. Bank officials maintained that the underlying information in the loan files was accurate and that the bank had not improperly foreclosed on any troubled homeowners.

Wells Fargo also said that it had no plans to temporarily freeze foreclosure sales, an action previously taken by its rivals Bank of America and GMAC.

Still, the revelations that Wells had identified as many as 55,000 improper foreclosure files add to the mortgage morass. Attorneys general in all 50 states are conducting a sweeping investigation into the industry’s practices, while a White House task force and several federal regulators have embarked on similar reviews.

In addition to Wells Fargo, four other large mortgage players are resubmitting tens of thousands of cases in large swaths of the country. Chase said it was looking at about 115,000 files in 41 states. Bank of America is looking at 102,000 in 23 states, where foreclosures require court approval. GMAC and PNC Financial have come forward to say they are resubmitting files with improper paperwork, too.

Still, Wells Fargo’s announcement was the second time a bank had backtracked on statements it had made about the extent of its foreclosure problems. After weeks of insisting that its review had not turned up any serious errors, Bank of America acknowledged a number of paperwork errors, including incorrect data and misspelled names.

Wells Fargo had previously taken an even more combative stance. In its Oct. 20 conference call with investors, bank officials said they were confident that the foreclosure processes and controls were sound. That statement gave the impression that there were few if any problems but left room for the possibility that the bank might have to fix a small number of mistakes.

During the conference call, Wells officials dismissed concerns that the bank had systematically engaged in so-called robo-signing, where a single employee would sign thousands of loan documents without verifying their contents, as the law requires. Instead, the bank emphasized that their policies called for the same employee who compiled the foreclosure file to sign off on it — a crucial legal requirement in many states.

But revelations in an obscure Florida lawsuit and elsewhere raised concerns about whether that process was always followed. Under questioning, Xee Moua, a Wells Fargo manager, said she would sign off on as many as 500 foreclosure files a day without verifying the accuracy of their contents. “We don’t go into the details with these affidavits,” she said in a deposition.

Oscar Suris, a Wells Fargo spokesman, declined to comment on whether any of the problems the bank identified stemmed from such violations. He previously called Ms. Moua’s testimony “one isolated case” that is being disputed in the courts.

Wells officials also acknowledged the possibility of notarization errors. Previously, Wells officials said they believed that their notarization procedures complied with the law in South Carolina, where the bank’s loan foreclosure operations were based. As a result of the reviews, bank officials now say they are taking into consideration the unique requirements of different counties and states.

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller and a team of his attorneys fanned across nine counties to sue 10 so-called foreclosure counselors Thursday.

Zoeller said it was the next step in his campaign to beef up consumer protection statewide. Last month, the attorney general sued two local for-profit credit counseling companies for what he described as fraudulent practice.

Zoeller said his team is also taking a close look at banking behemoths like Chase and Bank of America after word of their representatives "robo-signing," or blindly signing foreclosure documents, tantamount to legal affidavits, on thousands of homeowners nationwide, including a fair number in Indiana.

With Lake County Clerk Mike Brown by his side, Zoeller filed a complaint in Lake Circuit Court for an injunction and restitution against Santa Ana, Calif., based Meridian Law Center, run by attorney Kamran Yusuf Malik, for trying to get $2,000 from Sandra Dobson for foreclosure help.

"I had way more sense than to send those people any money," said Dobson, from the home she’s owned for 33 years. "I filed a complaint with the Indiana Attorney General’s office last year because the package they sent me looked fraudulent."

According to Zoeller, the 10 companies his investigators and attorneys sued have been taking money from people in financial straits and promising to help them save their homes from foreclosures or lower their mortgage rates.

Zoeller said the companies did not register to do business in Indiana, did not obtain $25,000 bonds mandated by the state and violated the Consumer Protection Act and other deceptive practices laws.

He accused the companies of having agents who seek targets based on foreclosure filings.

"Each of the companies have the same modus operandi," Zoeller said. "They’re preying on people who are in financial trouble."

Zoeller said collecting any money in restitution or costs from such companies is difficult, but the action at least sends out a warning to unsuspecting homeowners.

Dobson said she was in no financial trouble when she received a glossy, "important looking package" from Meridian Law Center Aug. 24, 2009, and immediately filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s office. The last time she was in any foreclosure proceedings was more than 25 years ago, Dobson added.

Dobson still praised Zoeller and his actions.

"I just think it’s wonderful because we’re just little people, and it’s about time somebody steps up to protect little people," she said. "They’re just con artists ripping off people trying to lead a decent life."

Zoeller said he is headed to Oregon for a meeting with of the states’ attorneys general to address the "robo-signing" scandal, but he declined to comment on specific cases in Indiana.

"Maybe all the documents are correct, but, in my mind, when you sign your name on those papers, you’re signing a legal affidavit."

That clash — expected to be played out in courtrooms across the country and scrutinized by law enforcement officials investigating possible wrongdoing by big lenders — leaped to the forefront of the mortgage crisis this week as big lenders began lifting their freezes on foreclosures and insisted the worst was behind them.

Battle Lines Forming in Clash Over Foreclosures

About a month after Washington Mutual Bank made a multimillion-dollar mortgage loan on a mountain home near Santa Barbara, Calif., a crucial piece of paperwork disappeared.

Cynthia Veintemillas, a lawyer in Florida, met with a client, Patrick Jeffs, on Wednesday.

Herbert Newlands Jr. of Temple Terrace, Fla., getting foreclosure advice from his lawyer on Tuesday. Florida has been hit hard by foreclosures.

But bank officials were unperturbed. After conducting a “due and diligent search,” an assistant vice president simply drew up an affidavit stating that the paperwork — a promissory note committing the borrower to repay the mortgage — could not be found, according to court documents.

The handling of that lost note in 2006 was hardly unusual. Mortgage documents of all sorts were treated in an almost lackadaisical way during the dizzying mortgage lending spree from 2005 through 2007, according to court documents, analysts and interviews.

Now those missing and possibly fraudulent documents are at the center of a potentially seismic legal clash that pits big lenders against homeowners and their advocates concerned that the lenders’ rush to foreclose flouts private property rights.

That clash — expected to be played out in courtrooms across the country and scrutinized by law enforcement officials investigating possible wrongdoing by big lenders — leaped to the forefront of the mortgage crisis this week as big lenders began lifting their freezes on foreclosures and insisted the worst was behind them.

Federal officials meeting in Washington on Wednesday indicated that a government review of the problems would not be complete until the end of the year.

In short, the legal disagreement amounts to whether banks can rely on flawed documentation to repossess homes.

While even critics of the big lenders acknowledge that the vast majority of foreclosures involve homeowners who have not paid their mortgages, they argue that the borrowers are entitled to due legal process.

Banks “have essentially sidestepped 400 years of property law in the United States,” said Rebel A. Cole, a professor of finance and real estate at DePaul University. “There are so many questionable aspects to this thing it’s scary.”

Others are more sanguine about the dispute.

Joseph R. Mason, a finance professor who holds the Louisiana Bankers Association chair at Louisiana State University, said that concerns about proper foreclosure documentation were overblown. At the end of the day, he said, even if the banks botched the paperwork, homeowners who didn’t make their mortgage payments still needed to be held accountable.

“You borrowed money,” he said. “You are obligated to repay it.”

After freezing most foreclosures, Bank of America, the largest consumer bank in the country, said this week that it would soon resume foreclosures in about half of the country because it was confident that the cases had been properly documented. GMAC Mortgage said it was also proceeding with foreclosures, on a case-by-case basis.

While some other banks have also suggested they can wrap up faulty foreclosures in a matter of weeks, some judges, lawyers for homeowners and real estate experts like Mr. Cole expect the courts to be inundated with challenges to the banks’ actions.

“This is ultimately going to have to be resolved by the 50 state supreme courts who have jurisdiction for property law,” Professor Cole predicted.

Defaulting homeowners in states like Florida, among the hardest hit by foreclosures, are already showing up in bigger numbers this week to challenge repossessions. And judges in some states have halted or delayed foreclosures because of improper documentation. Court cases are likely to hinge on whether judges believe that banks properly fulfilled their legal obligations during the mortgage boom — and in the subsequent rush to expedite foreclosures.

The country’s mortgage lenders contend that any problems that might be identified are technical and will not change the fact that they have the right to foreclose en masse.

“We did a thorough review of the process, and we found the facts underlying the decision to foreclose have been accurate,” Barbara J. Desoer, president of Bank of America Home Loans, said earlier this week. “We paused while we were doing that, and now we’re moving forward.”

Some analysts are not sure that banks can proceed so freely. Katherine M. Porter, a visiting law professor at Harvard University and an expert on consumer credit law, said that lenders were wrong to minimize problems with the legal documentation.

“The misbehavior is clear: they lied to the courts,” she said. “The fact that they are saying no one was harmed, they are missing the point. They did actual harm to the court system, to the rule of law. We don’t say, ‘You can perjure yourself on the stand because the jury will come to the right verdict anyway.’ That’s what they are saying.”

Robert Willens, a tax expert, said that documentation issues had created potentially severe tax problems for investors in mortgage securities and that “there is enough of a question here that the courts might well have to resolve the issue.”

As the legal system begins sorting through the competing claims, one thing is not in dispute: the pell-mell origination of mortgage loans during the real estate boom and the patchwork of financial machinery and documentation that supported it were created with speed and profits in mind, and with little attention to detail.

Once the foreclosure wheels started turning, said analysts, practices became even shoddier.

For example, the foreclosure business often got so busy at the Plantation, Fla., law offices of David J. Stern — and so many documents had to be signed so banks could evict people from their homes — that a supervisor sometimes was too tired to write her own name.

When that happened, Cheryl Samons, the supervisor at the firm, who typically signed about 1,000 documents a day, just let someone else sign for her, court papers show.

“Cheryl would give certain paralegals rights to sign her name, because most of the time she was very tired, exhausted from signing her name numerous times per day,” said Kelly Scott, a Stern employee, in a deposition that the Florida attorney general released on Monday. A lawyer representing the law firm said Ms. Samons would not comment.

Bill McCollum, Florida’s attorney general, is investigating possible abuses at the Stern firm, a major foreclosure mill in the state, involving false or fabricated loan documents, calling into question the foreclosures the firm set in motion on behalf of banks.

That problem extends far beyond Florida.

As lenders and Wall Street firms bundled thousands of mortgage loans into securities so they could be sold quickly, efficiently and lucratively to legions of investors, slipshod practices took hold among lenders and their representatives, former employees of these operations say.

Banks routinely failed to record each link in the chain of documents that demonstrate ownership of a note and a property, according to court documents, analysts and interviews. When problems arose, executives and managers at lenders and loan servicers sometimes patched such holes by issuing affidavits meant to prove control of a mortgage.

In Broward County, Fla., alone, more than 1,700 affidavits were filed in the last two years attesting to lost notes, according to Legalprise, a legal services company that tracks foreclosure data.

When many mortgage loans went bad in the last few years, lenders outsourced crucial tasks like verifying the amount a borrower owed or determining which institution had a right to foreclose.

Now investors who bought mortgage trusts — investment vehicles composed of mortgages — are wondering if the loans inside them were recorded properly. If not, tax advantages of the trusts could be wiped out, leaving mortgage securities investors with significant tax bills.

For years, lenders bringing foreclosure cases commonly did not have to demonstrate proof of ownership of the note. Consumer advocates and consumer lawyers have complained about the practice, to little avail.

But a decision in October 2007 by Judge Christopher A. Boyko of the Federal District Court in northern Ohio to toss out 14 foreclosure cases put lenders on notice. Judge Boyko ruled that the entities trying to seize properties had not proved that they actually owned the notes, and he blasted the banks for worrying “less about jurisdictional requirements and more about maximizing returns.”

He also said that lenders “seem to adopt the attitude that since they have been doing this for so long, unchallenged, this practice equates with legal compliance.” Now that their practices were “put to the test, their weak legal arguments compel the court to stop them at the gate,” the judge ruled.

Yet aside from the actions of a few random judges, little was done to force lenders to change their practices or slow things down. Since March 2009, more than 300,000 property owners a month have received foreclosure notices or lost their home in a foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosure listings.

What finally prompted a re-examination of the foreclosure wave was the disclosure in court documents over the last several months of so-called robo-signers, employees like Ms. Samons of the Stern law firm in Florida who signed affidavits so quickly that they could not possibly have verified the information in the document under review.

Lenders and their representatives have sought to minimize the significance of robo-signing and, while acknowledging legal lapses in how they documented loans, have argued that foreclosures should proceed anyway. After all, the lenders say, the homeowners owe the money.

People who have worked at loan servicers for many years, who requested anonymity to protect their jobs, said robo-signing and other questionable foreclosure practices emanated from one goal: to increase efficiency and therefore profits. That rush, they say, allowed for the shoddy documentation that is expected to become evidence for homeowners in the coming court battles.

For example, years ago when banks made loans, they typically stored promissory notes in their vaults.

But the advent of securitization, in which loans are bundled and sold to investors, required that loan documents move quickly from one purchaser to another. Big banks servicing these loans began in 2002 to automate their systems, according to a former executive for a top servicer who requested anonymity because of a confidentiality agreement.

First to go was the use of actual people to determine who should be liable to a foreclosure action. They were replaced by computers that identified delinquent borrowers and automatically sent them letters saying they were in default. Inexperienced clerical workers often entered incorrect mortgage information into the computer programs, the former executive said, and borrowers rarely caught the errors.

Other record-keeping problems that are likely to become fodder for court battles involve endorsements, a process that occurs when notes are transferred and validated with a stamp to identify the institution that bought it. Eager to cut costs, most institutions left the notes blank, with no endorsements at all.

Problems are also likely to arise in court involving whether those who signed documents required in foreclosures actually had the authority to do so — or if the documents themselves are even authentic.

For example, Frederick B. Tygart, a circuit court judge overseeing a foreclosure case in Duval County, Fla., recently ruled that agents representing Deutsche Bank relied on documents that “must have been counterfeited.” He stopped the foreclosure. Deutsche Bank had no comment on Wednesday.

Cynthia Veintemillas, the lawyer representing the borrower in the case, Patrick Jeffs, said the paperwork surrounding her client’s foreclosure was riddled with problems.

“Everybody knows the banks screwed up and loaned out money to people who couldn’t pay it back,” she said. “Why are people surprised that they don’t know what they are doing here either?”

Meanwhile, another judge on Wednesday indicated that the courts would not simply sign off on the banks’ documentation. Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of New York’s courts, ordered lawyers to verify the validity of all foreclosure paperwork.

“We cannot allow the courts in New York State to stand by idly and be party to what we now know is a deeply flawed process, especially when that process involves basic human needs — such as a family home — during this period of economic crisis,” Judge Lippman said in a statement.

“I don’t see how it can be cleared up in a short period of time,” said Richard X. Bove, an analyst with Rochdale Securities. “The moratorium won’t last that long but the problem will last at least four or five years, maybe a decade.” In the short term, he said, “it could easily cost $1.5 billion per quarter.”

After scratching their heads for weeks over how much the foreclosure mess will hurt banks’ bottom lines, investors got out their calculators Thursday to tally the potential costs — and sent bank stocks plunging.

Analyst estimates of the possible toll varied widely, but the fear was evident in the stock market. The share price of Bank of America fell 5.2 percent, while shares of JPMorgan Chase sank almost 2.8 percent.

“The market never likes uncertainty, and it seems like every day we’re adding to the list of things we need to worry about with the financials,” said Jason Goldberg, an analyst with Barclays Capital. “The industry needs to work quickly to put this issue behind them.”

Wall Street initially hoped the banks would do just that but as the political furor grew, a quick end to the crisis was looking less and less likely. On Wednesday, 50 state attorneys general announced they were investigating the practices of the mortgage servicing industry, while Florida’s attorney general subpoenaed the nation’s largest mortgage processor, L.P.S., as part of a broader investigation.

In some cases, officials at mortgage servicers signed hundreds of documents a day with barely a chance to review them — the so-called robo-signers — while doubts have arisen about the veracity of the original documents compiled as part of the foreclosure process.

“I don’t see how it can be cleared up in a short period of time,” said Richard X. Bove, an analyst with Rochdale Securities. “The moratorium won’t last that long but the problem will last at least four or five years, maybe a decade.” In the short term, he said, “it could easily cost $1.5 billion per quarter.”

Meanwhile, the foreclosure machinery in many states has ground to a halt. Major institutions like Bank of America, JPMorgan and GMAC Mortgage have halted foreclosures in many states, and have not said when they would resume. As a result, foreclosed homes will remain on the bank’s books while racking up thousands of dollars a month in extra costs.

Until Thursday, Wall Street regarded the foreclosure issue as a risk to the banks’ reputations, rather than their bottom lines. Indeed, some analysts insisted it was unlikely that wide-scale abuses would be found.

“It’s inexcusable that the banks didn’t staff up to meet the surge in foreclosures,” said Christopher Kotowski, an analyst with Oppenheimer. “On the other hand, we need to look at whether they are filing foreclosures on a massive basis against people who are not delinquent. So far, I haven’t seen any evidence that they are.”

Inside the investment houses, several traders said nerves were frazzled further by worries that banks could face much bigger mortgage related losses, not from foreclosures, but because of questions about how the money was lent in the first place. If it turns out that mortgages were bundled together and sold improperly, more holders could sue the banks and force them to buy back tens of billions in mortgage-backed securities.

An alarming report on Bank of America, compiled by Branch Hill Capital, a San Francisco hedge fund, circulated widely on Wall Street on Thursday. Branch Hill suggested that the bank, the nation’s largest, could be facing more than $70 billion in losses from mortgage securities that it may have to repurchase from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as private investors.

“We think this is a very important issue, and the liability will be substantial,” said Manal Mehta, a partner at Branch Hill. “There has been pervasive bad behavior throughout the system.” The fund is betting that Bank of America shares could decline because of the potential liability.

Bank of America declined to comment Thursday. But the company’s chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, said last month at an investor conference that adequate reserves had been taken to protect against any losses that could materialize if it was forced to repurchase mortgage securities. “This will be manageable over time, but it has cost us a lot of money so I’m not making light of it,” he said. “We’ll continue to manage it.”

On Wednesday, JPMorgan said it had added $1 billion to its reserves to cover faulty home loans that it was obligated to repurchase from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private insurers. It has set aside a total of $3 billion for potential repurchases.

Even if the larger losses envisioned by Mr. Mehta do not materialize, the foreclosure issue remains a worry. In a report, Paul Miller, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets, forecast that the controversy would cost the banking industry $6 billion to $10 billion. He estimated that each month’s delay cost the banks $1,000 per home loan, so if there was a three-month delay on the roughly two million homes currently in foreclosure, that translated into a $6 billion hit.

For now, bank executives are not making any predictions how long the foreclosure halt will last.

“If you’re talking about three or four weeks it will be a blip in the housing market,” said Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, in a conference call on Wednesday. “If it went on for a long period of time, it will have a lot of consequences, most of which will be adverse on everybody.”

The FBI report draws attention to one type of fraud that has grown considerably since the bubble burst: borrowers on the brink of foreclosure who hope to avail themselves of financial assistance related to federal stimulus legislation.

October 14, 2010 /24-7PressRelease/ — Once the dust had cleared from the recent economic collapse, the media focused a great deal of blame on one group: financial professionals involved in real property transactions who were accused of fudging documents, lying to buyers, falsifying appraisals and other illegal activities. New data from one federal agency reveals a growing interest in investigating all types of mortgage fraud and helping the Department of Justice pursue convictions.

The latest annual mortgage fraud report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reveals that the agency has taken a greater interest in crimes involving financing of homes and other real estate. From 2008 to 2009, investigations rose over 70 percent. The stakes are high: two-thirds of pending investigations during 2009 involved losses totaling more than $1 million.

When the real estate bubble was swelling at double-digit rates, some industry professionals padded profits by encouraging borrowers to maximize their debt load by entering into unsustainable adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). The FBI report draws attention to one type of fraud that has grown considerably since the bubble burst: borrowers on the brink of foreclosure who hope to avail themselves of financial assistance related to federal stimulus legislation. "Vulnerabilities associated with these and similar programs include the lack of transparency, accountability, oversight and enforcement that predisposes them to fraud and abuse," the FBI stated in its report.

The FBI indicated five states with the worst mortgage fraud problems: California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Arizona. In light of journalistic investigations revealing that a significant number of ex-criminals had received mortgage licenses, Florida state regulators have responded with a variety of measures to minimize risks, including annual criminal background checks for brokers and lenders.

Assembling Straw Buyers for Profit

Financial institutions are not the only parties who may be accused of making material misstatements, misrepresentations or omissions during the mortgage application process. One typical scheme perpetrated against banks and other lenders is the use of "straw buyer" scams, which involve using a stand-in to purchase property. Straw buyers can be used to obtain mortgage approval for an otherwise unattractive borrower, or to eliminate a paper trail on fraudulent investments and other scams.

One such situation recently investigated by the Tampa office of the FBI involved Mark J. Moncher, an Orlando man who posed out-of-state family members as buyers to channel mortgage funds to his business, Dream Home Management. Moncher was recently sentenced to 57 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud as part of a larger mortgage fraud scheme. His cadre of straw buyers all defaulted after obtaining more than $3.7 million in loans from various financial institutions. In addition to several years of incarceration, Moncher must pay nearly $2 million in restitution.

As this case reveals, the basic accusation behind a mortgage fraud case can be surprisingly simple: falsifying a borrower’s identity, income, employment, assets or other information can lead a mortgage lender to approve an application that would otherwise be denied. While lenders have become much more wary since the mortgage meltdown, there is still ample room for dishonest hustlers to game the system. At the same time, simple misunderstandings, honest mistakes and creative accounting can lead to baseless accusations of criminal intent and protracted legal struggles.

Protecting Your Interests by Avoiding Mortgage Fraud Accusations

Criminal allegations can arise at any stage of a real estate transaction. For example, appraisers can be suspected of mortgage fraud on behalf of either the seller or the lender by inflating the value of the property. Lenders or brokers can be accused of changing details in the paperwork, amending contracts after they are signed or failing to disclose pertinent information. Entrepreneurial buyers who quickly fix and sell homes can face allegations of illegal property flipping.

Federal and state authorities will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute mortgage fraud involving everything from loan origination, builder bailouts, and offshore transactions to equity skimming, short sales, reverse mortgages and loan modifications. But the facts surrounding even the most basic property transaction are complex, and parties who suspect that they may be under investigation should act swiftly to protect their interests and head off a prosecution before it gets off the ground.

The FBI, DOJ and other federal and state government agencies have tremendous resources to draw from to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. A defense attorney who has experience in federal white collar criminal cases can assess your situation, explain your rights, represent you in an investigation and defend your rights in the event that federal criminal charges are filed.

I have just filed an Amicus Brief on Friday, October 1, 2010 with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the landmark cases that are presently on appeal from the Massachusetts Land Court styled: U.S. Bank v. Ibanez and its companion case, Wells Fargo Bank v. LaRace.

Moreover, the Assignment of Mortgage allegedly conveying the Ibanez loan to U.S. Bank, executed by “robo-signer” Linda Green, violated the Pooling and Servicing Agreement and other Trust documents.

Finally I expose the fact that U.S. Bank, who bought the Ibanez property at foreclosure for $94,350, sold it on December 15, 2008 for $0.00. That’s right, they foreclosed on Ibanez’s property so that they could give it away!

With respect to Mark and Tammy LaRace, I am happy to report that through the efforts of Attorney Glenn F. Russell, Jr. and myself, the LaRaces moved back into their home in January of this year, two and a half years post-foreclosure!

My Amicus Brief reveals that Wells Fargo Bank’s own documents prove that they did not have the authority to foreclose on the LaRaces. Therefore, the Assignment of Mortgage, Power of Attorney, Affidavit, and Foreclosure Deed executed by “robo-signer” Cindi Ellis were all unauthorized.

Wells Fargo Bank’s recent statement that it does not have the same “document” problem that GMAC, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America have admitted to is simply not true. I have audited many, many foreclosure files where Wells Fargo Bank employees and their agents have manufactured false documents to prosecute wrongful foreclosures such as in the LaRaces’ case.

—————————–———-
Breaking News Alert: Sen. Reid calls on major lenders to halt foreclosures in all 50 states
October 8, 2010 12:56:49 PM
—————————————-

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called on major lenders to halt foreclosures in all 50 states Friday following Bank of America’s announcement it was stopping proceedings until it finishes reviewing possible paperwork problems.

Reid, who had sent a letter to major banks asking them to suspend foreclosures in Nevada, extended his concern to include all 50 states.

“I thank Bank of America for doing the right thing by suspending actions on foreclosures while this investigation runs its course," said Reid. "I urge other major mortgage servicers to consider expanding the area where they have halted foreclosures to all 50 states as well."

He emphasized, "My primary focus is to protect Nevada homeowners who have been hardest hit by foreclosures in the most recent economic downturn."

Copyright MMXVII AskMikeButler.com • 4012 Dupont Circle, Suite 203 • Louisville, KY 40207
(502) 896-2595 DISCLAIMER: Per the current FTC guidelines, AskMikeButler.com and MikeButler.com are in the process of collecting results data in order to be able to define the
"typical" or "average" experience of our clients. While we collect this data, we are sharing of potential results based on theoretical numbers for illustrative purposes only and should not be considered income claims. None of these stories in any way represent the "average" or "typical" experience. In fact, as with any product or service, we know some members purchase our system but never use it, and therefore get no results whatsoever. Therefore, the client stories and testimonials neither represent nor guarantee the current or future experience of other past, current, or future 5mWebinars.com clients. Rather, their stories and testimonials represent what is possible with trainings and products. Each of these unique stories and/or testimonials, and any and all results reported by individuals, are the culmination of numerous variables, many of which AskMikeButler.com and our clients cannot control, including pricing,
target market conditions, product/service quality, offer, customer service, personal initiative, and countless other tangible and intangible factors. The information provided on AskMikeButler.com has been prepared with our best efforts, but cannot be warranted for effectiveness in every situation or against change.